The Myth of the Bisexual Male

Source

First off, let me clarify.  I don't believe that bisexuality is a myth whatsoever.  In fact, I liked bisexual people so much that I became one.  This post is going to be a look into the "myth of the bisexual male" that people in my hometown seem to subscribe to.  This isn't meant to offend anybody that is bisexual, this is merely a bout of story time.

Back where I'm from in Small Town, MO, you had two options when you graduated high school.  These were A) marry your high school sweetheart, have 4 kids, and work at Walmart till you die or B) move away and never come back.  Sounds like a nice simple small town in the heart of America.  The only problem is that left out of the equation all of the LGBTQ people that sneakily existed in our town.  Homo- and bisexuality just didn't exist.  It was either covered up due to familial shame, or people just legitimately didn't know that such orientations existed.

Suddenly, about the time I went into junior high, this new-fangled thing came into the county.  A movement of LGBTQ people coming out had hit us below the Bible belt and the good ol' fashioned church goers finally had a name and face to put toward that fancy thing that their pastors had preached against their whole lives.  

Even though homosexuality was tolerated (I don't say accepted cause it was a very Baptist town), there was a huge brain block to my townsmen when it came to bisexuality.  You see, female bisexuals were completely okay.  In fact, it was the "cool" thing to be a bisexual lady.  Girls as young as 8th grade were professing their bisexuality and awkwardly making out with other little girls in the school auditorium.  But bisexual guys, however, were a completely different story.  Bisexual men just didn't exist.  You were either gay, or straight.  Bisexuality wasn't a thing that guys did.  If you claimed you were bisexual, you were obviously just a gay man trying to cover it up.

This seems to be a prevalent idea in a lot of the small towns I've lived in or visited.  Bisexual men is an oxymoron.  I even had one barber a few miles west of BFE, MO tell me that he truly believed bisexual men were worse than gay men, because "those kindsa guys are just prancing fairies that are trying to hide their tutu and wings".  

Now that I've moved to the big city for college, I'm seeing a lot less of the "myth of the bisexual male", but unfortunately it's still there.  I tell people I'm bisexual and receive disapproving looks of confusion.  Then I mention my girlfriend and they say "You're not bisexual, you're straight!".  My girlfriend can mention that she's bisexual and is dating me and people seem to accept her bisexuality right away.  I don't know if this is a common problem for bisexual people all over, but I know that here in modern-day MO, bisexual men are still very rare creatures.  You know, kinda like purple-and-blue unicorns.  The erasure of bisexual men is all too common.  Don't fall prey to such a misleading notion.  Bi men, bi women, bi anybody is just as legit as any other kind of sexuality.